"Yes, I know it's short notice, but we don't need a full fleet." With the best access to communication software and the speed with which to enact any decision they made, it fell to the AI to liaise quickly between the Acorn Kingdom and any other nations, especially in the case of high-profile calls and interactions. Within minutes of making the decision with the others she had begun making preparations to contact GUN, but that had involved looking inwards rather than out. Even with the amount of autonomy she was allowed, this had to go through the crown and the organisations that surround it. "Just fast-movers."

"That's…within plausibility, assuming you don't intend them to engage alone." Fortunately, after rendezvousing with Elias and establishing a connection to United Federation forces, they'd been patched through to the current administration. With Robotnik's latest weapon in the air many GUN forces were already on standby, but their location made it hard to intervene quickly in large numbers.
"If it goes well, they won't need to be directly involved at all. We need them to engage in a delaying action and buy enough time for our team to get in range." Patched in through the palace's war chamber systems, Nicole's current body had to spare constant glances back at the king. He technically had the power to veto anything said.

"What exactly have you got in mind?"
"We're going to ground it. Right now it's not a threat, but if it can get back in its own airspace it can repair, and then we have a problem we're not ready to deal with. They're on the defensive, so we cripple it now and flatten it quickly." They spoke to a holographic map display, but anywhere in the room would have done. Elias, sitting a distance away from her could hear without complaint, and he could involve himself without moving.
"We would appreciate it if you could have a larger support force moving up during the operation to finish the job, but the Freedom Fighters will have command for this mission." There were few things he needed to say personally, but this was one of them. He had his duty after all, and his own authority. "They have hostages inside that we need to retrieve before the Death Egg can be removed permanently."
"May we enquire as to the identity of these hostages?"

Nicole and Elias glanced at each other for a moment, then nodded slowly.

"Three of our agents. Mrs. Bunnie DeCoolette, née Rabbot, and Mr. Rotor Walrus went missing aboard the vessel, with reports that they were captured... The third is Princess Sally herself. Unfortunately, she has... been roboticized, and claimed personal responsibility for the other two captures." It was fortunate the lynx was there to mediate between the two factions. Though the king was holding himself together remarkably well, the shock of hearing about Sally's state had left him less than prepared to attend to matters of state without aid.

There was silence bar some static from the other end of the line as the generals and council members discussed the situation. "We…understand the severity of the situation. The assistance provided by the kingdom as a whole to the United Federation and the involvement of the Freedom Fighters has not gone unnoticed. Based on our estimates, we can have forty percent of our light airborne forces intercept the station's current trajectory in…two hours."

"And the relief force?"
"Uncertain. It relies heavily on the success of your operation. Another hour on our most optimistic estimates. We recommend you intercept along the edge of the desert to minimise environmental damage."

"Duly noted." Nicole allowed herself a faint smile. THey were in with a chance now, however slim. "I will have all of the available Freedom Fighters prepared and ready to launch once you report an all-clear."
"Understood. We will be in touch as soon as possible." One of the commanders replied. "Have you informed the general populace of the Princess'... predicament?"

"No, and we'd appreciate it being kept that way for the meantime. If this operation succeeds then there will be no need to let them know. If not…"
"If not, we will make provision for it." Elias rescued her from the awkward situation. It was his duty to speak to the media and take the brunt of the public unrest, though that had not been the case not too long ago. "If you could avoid writing up your press report until we know the outcome of this attack, it'd be appreciated."
"The United Federation already owes the kingdom a great debt. We will not cause you any more problems than you already face. UF command out." The link cut sharply from the other end.

"Well, that's something..." Nicole sighed, collapsing on a nearby seat. "I... I don't know how we can do this, your majesty... I... What about Naugus?"
"Ignore him." He too, relaxed visibly. "This is more important, and it can't wait. I'll…even in his case, a claim like his can be stalled beyond belief. I'm not my father, but I'm pretty sure I can dig up plenty of red tape. Take care of this first."
"Alright... I hope I can... With the way he's been riling people up, they keep harassing me... I'm sorry, it's just I... I..."

He held up one hand to silence her, barely turning. "Nicole, you are this city. What's more, you've got my support, and that of the other Freedom Fighters. The people believe in you, however little they show it, but they're scared. We're all afraid of things we don't understand, and Naugus is preying on that fear. In the end it's all bluster, and once we take care of him you'll see what the people of this kingdom really think."

Nicole smiled faintly again, and stood up.

"Thank you, sir... I'll return to the others now, and tell them the plan." She spoke quietly - even with the reassurance, she wasn't feeling fantastic. "Then I have modifications to make to some old Tornado prototypes."
"Go do what you do best." He smiled as confidently as he could in return. "And I'll do what I do best – make fat old men in fancy robes feel insignificant."

Nicole chuckled slightly, and flickered back into the digital aether she called home, the city fading into a modular, green-glowing copy, the people replaced with chunky, non-sentient programs. She moved herself toward the Freedom Fighter's building, travelling much faster in the virtual realm than she did in the physical one. She'd never put much thought into the look of this world beyond the necessity of it – it was all basically here, and people didn't look particularly amazing on the inside. Still, it was full of latent defensive programs all hiding in the framework, just out of sight in case they were needed.

People passed by slowly, hundreds of times so, at a pace that had bored her to begin with – though she could interact on a daily basis with most regular folk, she couldn't slow down her thought speed to account for it, and as such she lived a life far faster than all of her friends. She thought more and got more done, and in turn she was more easily stressed. Arriving at the building in question, she waved her hands, and began to form a new nanite body to inhabit. It took form, gained her colours, and she loaded her consciousness into it, all within a few seconds. She opened her eyes as the white glare faded, and looked around her sullen allies.

"GUN is sending a small squadron to intercept the Death Egg and provide us with primary cover. Elias has elected to avoid revealing what has happened to Sally until after we return with her. For now, the most we will mention is that she has been captured, and that's only if we have to." She looked to Tails; the fox had planned to contact the Wolf Pack, but that was a task easier said than done. Like their own Freedom Fighters, other such resistance groups were frequently indisposed in the field.

"I'm afraid the Wolf Pack must be dealing with something important- There was nobody left on comm duty." He said. "I'll try again shortly."
"Alright. In the meantime, you could help me with the Tornado mods, maybe?"
"Of course, I was going to do that anyway."

"Tzere is sometzing else to address." Antoine spoke up. "Who will be leading us during Sally's absence?"
"Ant's got a point." Sonic mumbled. "Normally she passes interim leader duties off to me, but this situation needs some level of tactical ability..." The hedgehog was about as tactful as a necrophile at a funeral, but they didn't have many people who were left, let alone who could take over the mantle. The two hedgehogs were counted out almost immediately, practically for the same reason, and Antoine worked best engaging on his own. Only Tails and Nicole were viable replacements, and neither of them wanted the mantle.

"Very well…I'll do that for now." It was yet another duty on top of all of her others, but the AI knew about the role more than the rest of them. She'd worked with Sally formulating plans and had served as tactical advisor in and out of the field.
"Thanks, Nikki." Sonic put a hand on her shoulder. "You'll do fine. We'll have Sal back in no time..."

It didn't take a telepath of Nicole's prowess to sense that Sonic was nowhere near as certain of that as he wanted to appear. The heavy uneasiness filled the room again, leaving the five remaining Freedom Fighters looking awkwardly at the floor. However sound the plan was, the team wasn't. No matter how much they psyched up for it, they'd lost their strategist, a heavy hitter and a tech specialist, and now they would be fighting at least one of them, with members who were mainly reserves.

"Tails, maybe we should…" She didn't really need to finish the sentence for the kitsune to nod and rise. They had work to do and no encouraging words for each other; sitting in silence wouldn't make it any easier. Tails crossed to the door, looking back at he others.
"I'll see you later." He said quietly, and stepped out of the door. Nicole faded away again - she didn't like venturing outside at the moment, leaving the remaining trio in an awkward silence.

Amy tried to break it. "So…what now?"
"We wait." Sonic replied, "We sit and…fucking…wait." There was no fight in him, not right now, when he wasn't moving. With everyone else either waiting like him or engaged in prep work, the waiting between now and getting out there was the worst thing for him to be doing right about now.
Antoine shifted uncomfortably in the ensuing silence. "Sonic…you and I…we 'ave both been put in tze most uncomfortable of positions, no?"
"Say what?"

"We…we both 'ave strong partners, and yet, eeht is us who must save tzem. Seems…ironic."

Sonic's eyes narrowed. "I'm stronger than Sal, physically. I should've been there. What does another scrap with Eggman matter in the grand scheme of things? Nothing... I even took a shot at him for his complacency with Metal... I shouldn't have left her."

He tensed, his quills spiking up and shredding the back of his chair. The coyote regarded the shift with a moment of surprise, but nothing more. He had nothing to fear from Sonic. "And yet…here we are. I feel as if I should 'ave been tzere…for all tze good eeht would 'ave done. I cannot remember who eeht was who said eeht, but strength does not always mean preventing tze worst, it means correcting eeht when tze worst happens."

"Right, well... Let's "correct it", then." Sonic said, standing up, and stalking towards the door. "I'm going for a run. I'll stay close to the city, but I need to burn off steam."
"Alright... Stay safe, Sonic." Amy replied. He nodded dismissively, and left the building. He got it, that they were all suffering right now, that they were trying to help by talking to him, but it all felt so hollow. It all just bounced off him, felt like knives. He just needed to get Sal back; that was it.

"Our course is currently set to take us on the most direct route back to safe Empire airspace."
"Hm…good, good. Shouldn't take long…" Though he could not resist bombarding his catch with an endless tirade of questions and commentary, the novelty of having her in his presence had quickly worn off without someone to laud it over. With her capabilities in mind he had retired her to the laboratories for the journey to inventory items recovered from the fight. It was a job he was happy to be able to delegate to others. "Anything else to report?"

"Nothing. I shall continue to work on the computer, and report again when it is done."
"Good, good... dismissed." The line died, and Mecha Sally turned away from microphone, back to the small handheld. The palmtop had been plugged into the Death Egg's computer. She stroked her chin, optics narrowing, as she typed code after code into the device, digging through firewalls and defences.

Theoretically it should be impossible to break through these algorithms; they had been designed by the most powerful computer on the planet as her defence mechanism against unwanted intrusions. Unfortunately, they came hand in hand with locking out of the handheld, meaning Nicole could no longer randomise the strings; they became regular. Complex, but regular. She need only find the pattern. Even that would have been difficult…if she did not know her old friend so well. The barriers that she had put in herself weren't even an obstacle. She could simply input her own password, and deactivate them, ready to be put back in place once she was finished- Much more efficient than the smash-and-grab methods favoured by her captor.

Traces of her target flashed across the screen, active, but unaware of her presence. Injecting the program she had written, she prepared to bring it across into the Death Egg's systems, where its defences would be relatively fragile. Despite the mad doctor's genius, his computer designs were nowhere near as complex and difficult to work with as Nicole's, and by isolating a program, intelligent or otherwise, within the less advanced systems, she could give it a much lower chance of defending itself.

But her target was elusive, flickering back and forth across her search like a maddened insect. It moved with no thought for its destination – she doubted at this point it had anywhere to really go, but it moved still, and in conjunction with having to dodge the inner defences and deflect her master's questions, she had not set herself a simple objective.
You're there. You've always been there.
A moment later, and her probe latched onto something, sending back a stream of high-frequency requisitions. Tapping a few more keys, the screen nearest her gained a reddish tint, followed by the computers surrounding it, then the ones around those, until every screen in the room displayed the same glow.

Perfect.

Miles away, in Mobotropolis' main hangar, Nicole hovered over one of the grey, incomplete prototypes that the Tornado-2 had been based on, several years ago now, as she carefully began to sync herself up with its on-board computers. Floodlights streaming down from above on the two dozen prototypes and mid-development variants, it struck her how much they looked like the phalanxes of old standing in parade.

Honestly, they weren't much more advanced than that. As many of them had not survived beyond the testing phase, while the bodies were complete and flight-worthy if not for storage wear, they had little software beyond the minimal flight programming and combat tech installed. There was ample room for her modifications, but many of them needed patches that would have to be installed on the fly.

As she finished loading her codes into the small plane, the lynx felt a slight twinge in the back of her head. She paused- Lacking nerve endings, she should not have felt anything, and yet, there was the sensation of a numb, aching pain growing in her mind. She blinked a few times, and began to clutch her head with one hand, groaning quietly, albeit not quiet enough for Tails to miss, and he was working on refitting the wiring only a few feet below.

At first, he thought nothing of it, simply dismissed it as the groan of shifting metal in a room full of the stuff, until its pitch changed, and he guessed its origin. Copper strips inside rubber tubing could wait; he wheeled himself out to see the AI, her current body half-slumped against the side of the machine, as if hungover from a night clubbing. Artificial Intelligence didn't have the ability to be hungover. "Nicole, what's wrong?"
"I…I…" She didn't look at him to begin with, simply stuttered and shook her head. "Not sure…"
"Well, how do you feel?"
"It's strange... it's like... there was something there, but now... it's gone."
"Maybe we should run a diagnostic?"
"That's not all... I feel like something's missing, but there don't seem to be any gaps in my memory..."

There had to be something wrong – with no organic parts she was immune to such menial things as headaches or migraines, and any actual fault – such as a dead processor or failing storage block – showed an immediate and identifiable change, along with a system alert. This was just some general feeling of discomfort, something she did not often feel without conscious decision. Even when the feeling passed, that loss remained, the sense of emptiness she couldn't quite shake.
"Did someone try and hack you?"
"It…no, it doesn't feel right. I've got deep scans going everywhere and they're not picking up any malware, spyware, or hunter-killers, or anything else you'd expect, and all of my caches are verifying as complete and uncorrupted."

"Check your firewalls, see if they're still up." Tails said.
"Right, right... sorry, I should've done that first." She said, still visibly shocked. "Oh my..."
"What?"
"Everything's gone, except for the ones Sally put in. Most of my own defences have been broken down...but…everything's still there." Someone had broken in – that fact was undeniable, but for what purpose? Nothing left, nothing taken, it was as if someone had done it to prove that they could.

But there wasn't anyone that would do that. Not even the hot-shot coders fresh out of class would try it on an AI, and all of the people with legitimate reasons to hack her would have left more visible marks of their presence than this: offline defences that could be reinstalled and calibrated as necessary.
"We should keep working." She brought herself back to the task at hand. "I'll…keep searching, see if I can turn anything up, but we need to get these off the ground."